


You Feel My Heat (I'm Just a Moment Behind)

by innie



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:00:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24781945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie
Summary: Steve and Bucky, the Inseparables.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Sarah Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes & the Barneses, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Sarah Rogers & Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & the Barneses
Comments: 14
Kudos: 49





	You Feel My Heat (I'm Just a Moment Behind)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [victoria_p (musesfool)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/gifts).



> For the wonderful vic, on the occasion of her (first) 50th birthday! This is an excerpt (and all that's written) of the much larger Bucky+Steve, Steve/Bucky fic that I've been thinking about pretty much since we left the theater after seeing _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_.
> 
> More might be coming, though not soon. (Tags are only for this excerpt.) Title by Duran Duran.

Steve lay on his stomach on the unrolled rug, freshly sharpened pencil in his hand, reveling in the quality of the creamy paper in the sketchbook Mr. Barnes had given him; Mr. Barnes had said that Steve's drawings deserved as much paper as did Mrs. Barnes's dress patterns and Bucky's designs for rocket ships, every part neatly labeled except for the smiling face looking out of the front window that had to be Bucky himself. Steve could draw a better Bucky _in his sleep_ , and he thought about Bucky's face that morning, telling him just before the first school bell rang, that he had a new baby sister, Lillian. Steve thought he might've been upset that he was the only boy, outnumbered now by _two_ little sisters, but Bucky'd seemed pleased more than anything.

It wasn't long before Bucky's face was on the page just as he remembered it, laughing open-mouthed and bright at Steve's surprise. He'd have to think about the rest of the drawing — how to show the sunlight that had poured in behind him, so that he cast the shadow that Steve'd stood in, and the whirl of boys around them that had seemed to fade away when Bucky conveyed his news like only Steve out of all their classmates deserved to hear it — but in the meantime, he thought, the face was pretty good. He was drawing the line that bisected Bucky's tongue when he saw Mam's feet close to the edge of the sketchbook.

"Up now, lamb, time for tea," she said, but she looked a little worried. He didn't know why; he hadn't coughed or felt shivers rack his body for a few days now. He reared up and rolled back to his knees, staggering with his first upright step.

The tea she gave him in his own special cup was weak, just hot water with a little flavor, so maybe what she was worried about was that there wasn't money enough for milk or even sugar. But her eyes were fixed on the sketchpad that still lay on the floor.

"What's wrong?" She tilted her head instead of answering him. "Isn't it any good?" It looked just right to him, Bucky's big eyes all scrunched up into crescent moons over his slightly crossed front teeth.

"Sweet boy, it's wonderful." Mam paused, now eyeing him. "Could you make me one all my own?"

Steve could feel his face light up. He'd been practicing, all the hours he was alone and even sometimes when he was at Bucky's, if Bucky had to keep Becca amused. It was so good to hear that he could make Mam happy with his pencil.

He didn't bother to find the words to answer her, just dove for the pad, flipped to a new page, and then paused. That pin-scratch frown between her eyebrows was still there, and he figured she might not want a picture of Bucky for herself, even if it was the best one he'd ever done.

Steve settled back on his belly and began drawing her; he didn't need to look back up to know what she looked like when she cradled her cup of tea in both hands, how the soft wave of her hair caught the light, or how the tip of her nose was turned pertly up. He shaded her eyes more darkly than her hair, which had bits of blonde woven through the soft brown, and handed over the pad once the last lock was done.

Mam smiled to see herself and Steve hid his grin by gulping down his lukewarm tea. "Are my eyebrows really so flat?" she asked, fetching her compact to inspect her face in its small mirror. "So they are." Her reflected eye winked at him. "You've a real gift, lamb, for seeing things and remembering them."

Mam looked happier now, so Steve nodded. He still hadn't worked out what had made her pause before, but it hardly mattered now. Anyway, he should have told her the news the minute she walked in. "Did you hear that Bucky has a new little sister?" he asked, flipping back to the previous page of the sketchbook to finish deepening the dimple in Bucky's chin. Mam just sighed and finished her tea.

*

Lilly looked different from Bucky and Becca, and it made her difficult to draw. Mr. Barnes swore that Lilly was the spit (only he said doppelgänger) of his big sister Millicent, but since Aunt Milly lived all the way out in Black Sox territory, Steve wasn't likely to get a gander at her any time soon, so that was no help. Anyway, he was just too used to drawing Bucky from memory — his hand started to make the curve of Bucky's cheeks automatically, even though Lil's cheeks were much rounder. 

Steve put the pad and the nub of a pencil down and flexed his fingers. It was probably late enough that Mam'd want him to be sleeping, even if she wasn't home to remind him. He needed his rest anyway, since he'd _finally_ worked up the nerve to ask Buck to teach him to swim and to keep it a dead secret from _everyone_ , in case he couldn't master it in the few hours he had when he wasn't under Mam's watchful eye. He lay down in his bed and pictured it, sliding easily through the smooth blue-green coolness like an expertly fired arrow.

Hours later, dripping wet from being soaked again on the way home by an open hydrant, Steve had an entirely different opinion about swimming. He couldn't believe some people chose to do it for _fun_.

He hadn't really thought about his ears when he'd been basically begging Bucky to teach him to swim. Buck, of course, could swim like a fish, and the way he'd described it, it'd sounded like Steve's biggest problem was going to be timing his breaths and praying that his lungs would be at least as good in the water as they were on land — he couldn't really hope for better. But he'd had water pressing unbearably into his ears, weighing down his noggin so that all of the holes in his head felt thickly clogged, and he could barely hear a word or enjoy the sensation of Bucky's arms around him, warm even with cool water streaming off them. 

Steve was shivering in Bucky's old shorts, smack in the middle of Bucky's kitchen, trying to tip his chin up defiantly. If anyone deserved a licking, it was him, not Bucky, who'd only done what he'd asked and not, for a wonder, treated him like he was breakable. But Mrs. Barnes was going on and on about how Buck should have had more sense than to take Steve, who could get sick on a dry and windless day in high summer, and pitch him underwater. Lil, her little shadow, was nodding in agreement, as if a three-year-old understood everything that was being said. Never mind that Steve could now float — sort of — and manage a modified breaststroke. Never mind that Steve had finally understood how weightlessness could be a pleasant sensation, when a buoyant Bucky was splashing around him in the floating pool, grinning fit to beat the band and whooping encouragement.

"Tell me this, James Buchanan, what would you have said to Mrs. Rogers had something happened to her boy?" Buck's mam wound up with, and Bucky looked abashed and stricken, enough that she dropped her wooden spoon and surged forward helplessly to catch him, damp as he was, in her arms.

She hugged his head to her, right where the bump of her belly showed she was fixing to have another baby. "What am I to do with you?" Buck wound his arms around his mam, but she shrugged free after only a second, chucking his chin and handing him a clean towel. "Go, dry Master Rogers off before he catches his death in my clean, dry kitchen."

Steve's feet were rooted to the ground, in trepidation or anticipation he couldn't say, and Bucky swiped the towel roughly over his head. Steve peeked out from beneath its folds and saw Bucky, still faintly glistening with water, with his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth in concentration like he owed the task his full attention and contrition.

Lil piped up. It was a surprise she hadn't before, really, since she liked to talk. But Steve, whose ears were only just beginning to pop, had never heard her sound like this, like she'd caught her mam's voice and was using it as her very own. She even rearranged her features so that she looked like Mrs. Barnes, round-faced and hearty. The kid was an unholy mimic.

"You're in trouble, James Banana," Steve vaguely heard her say, and heard, much more clearly, Bucky and his mam both begin to laugh at the way she'd butchered her brother's name. All the Barnes men shared that middle name, as a tribute to the one who'd chosen to establish the family in America; it was Buchanan Barnes's grandson who'd started the family factory that Bucky would run one day.

Steve took over drying duties when Bucky's hands fell, and he pushed the towel aside to see Mrs. Barnes's face shining with delight as she rested a hand on her belly. Bucky's posture changed to become like a lumbering monster. "I'll Banana you," Bucky growled, and Lil squealed, giggled, and ran as he gave chase.

*

Sully's face fell when he saw Steve in the Barnes apartment, but since Sully went ahead and asked them both to come play war at the armory, Steve decided not to hold a grudge. He nodded and Bucky nodded too, a little slower. He never could get Buck to play soldiers, but maybe a whole crowd of fellas could do the trick. 

At the armory, Steve drew himself up to his full height, aware as always of how unimpressive it was, but it wasn't like he was gonna stop trying to do justice to his dad, who'd been a blue-eyed soldier in a land far away from his new wife. Or trying, if he was honest, to do justice to Buck, who'd pointed out that if they both played they'd make the teams lopsided and said, "Steve should be the general, he's got a mind like a steel trap," before wandering off to admire the architecture and remind himself of the movies that'd been shot here.

Steve could hardly believe that Sully and Mack and the rest were letting him on their team without Bucky, never mind letting him lead, but he dug deep into his memory of rainy days that he'd spent poring over Hannibal's victories because he couldn't set a foot outside; all of the maps and diagrams from those books were clear in his mind. The Plains of Casilinum proved most instructive, and Steve led his men not just to victory over Shane Nealy's boys but to a rout that eclipsed all other war games in recent memory.

Sully's hand tousling his hair approvingly was sweeter than Steve'd expected, and he felt himself beaming from ear to ear. Better yet was the way Bucky spun the day into a yarn for his sisters, drawing gasps of admiration from Lilly and small, secret smiles from Becca who recognized the echoes of _The Iliad_ ; she'd probably had to listen to Bucky translating it when they'd had it in class just last year. To keep himself from grinning, he sat in the corner and sketched Esther, still roly-poly and pink with health, slumbering safely in her mother's arms.

*

"No," Steve cried out, angry and frustrated tears springing to his eyes. He was the son of a decorated soldier — if not really decorated, then at least memorialized in the rolls of the Church and on a plaque on one of the trees lining Eastern Parkway, close enough that he could walk by it on his way to Bucky's — and he couldn't even summon up the strength to push his mam away. His mam, who looked so delicate but could work half the night on customers' laundry, her patient steps shuffling across the kitchen floor, bringing more and more hot water to the tub and dumping out the lukewarm. 

"Hush now, sweet boy," Mam said. "You need to rest."

He pushed against her shoulder as she leaned over him to gauge his temperature. His arms were so feeble that she didn't budge an inch. Mortified, he felt the tears slip free and spill onto his face. 

"What's all this, then? Are you so anxious to be at your lessons?" she teased gently, whisking the drops off his cheeks. Her brown eyes were so close, so warm resting on him.

He nodded fervently. Every time he missed school, for stretches of days at a time, some other boy would be horning in on his territory. Bucky never seemed particularly taken by anyone, and readily called Steve his best friend whenever Steve needed to hear the words, but Steve couldn't help despising himself anyway for hating those shared jokes the boys made sure to call out once Steve was back. He even sometimes hated Bucky for laughing when the jokes came up, and then he would remember that Mam and Mrs. Barnes had said, flat out, that Bucky was not to visit when Steve was sick, lest he pass something on to his little sisters, and that it certainly wasn't Bucky's fault that Steve couldn't keep up. 

He was little, and useless, and a burden to his mother, as he'd heard time and again. He sat up and flung his arms around her, sniffling wetly at her neck. Her throat carried the familiar fragrance of lavender but her steady hands smelled like vinegar; she kept the apartment scrupulously clean, scrubbing everything — even the chamber pot she kept for when he was too weak to make it down the hall to the shared bathroom — with vinegar to combat his many infections. 

It wasn't right. She deserved to smell like perfume, like some expensive French scent; she loved the smell of flowers and actually let Mrs. Barnes take her to the Botanical Gardens as her birthday treat every year. She shouldn't have to be disinfecting things both at work and at home, and if he wasn't so useless, he could do what Bucky was doing and get a job before school to bring home some money so Mam could put her feet up once in a while. Not that they could afford to buy him a bicycle, or like he would have the strength to pedal it all the way to Fort Greene before dawn and back in time for school every day.

And that was the other reason he had to get up and go to school today; Bucky would be bringing him a bagel hot out of the oven, and if he didn't go, one of the other boys would snatch up his treat. It didn't matter that Bucky wouldn't have made the bagel himself, not being part of the union. What mattered was that Bucky would have taken the time to pick one salt and two plain from the morning's batches so that he and Becca and Steve could all have a hearty lunch during recess. Steve's mouth watered at the thought of it, and his stomach audibly growled.

Mam huffed out a little laugh at the sound. "You'll have porridge and then you'll sleep the day away, lamb. And you'll wake in the morning sound as a bell."

"No, Mam," he protested again, but he could see how drawn her face was as she turned away to cook his breakfast. "Not too much!" he called after her, aggravating his raw throat, and then wished he could have bitten his tongue; there wasn't likely to be much in the tin anyway.

The bowl of porridge she brought was more water than milk, but he slurped it down, feeling the heat soothe his throat, and even mustered up a smile for her before sinking back against the pillow like a dishrag. Bucky would bring another bagel to school tomorrow, and maybe some charcoal too; nothing could break his fidelity. Mam took the bowl from his unresisting fingers and set it aside. Pushing back his hair from his sticky forehead, Mam sang him to sleep.

*

He couldn't get his pencil to put down the right lines to translate the delicacy of her ankles, the soft untidiness of her flat blondish-brownish bun, or the lean muscles of her arms, but Steve thought that might have been due more to the ache in his head and the fog in his eyes than any failure in his hand. 

"Mam, tell me something," he asked, his voice still clogged, and she looked up from her ironing, peering at him through the cloud of steam. "When you saw us today," he gestured at his still-tender nose, "why'd you cuddle Bucky?"

That had been the shock of his life, when she'd come upon the two of them, Bucky trying to clean Steve's broken nose with hands bruised and hot from the wild-eyed beatdown he'd administered to Shane Nealy, and said not a word about the blood staining their shirts. Maybe, in her mind, injuries were different from illnesses, but he'd been expecting her to cuddle _his_ head against her breast while she made that clucking sound that never failed to soothe him. Instead, she'd opened her arms to Bucky, who'd crumpled against her, and laid her cheek on the top of his head. "Sweet boy," she'd murmured, and Steve honestly couldn't have said if she was sharing out her nickname for him with his best friend or just placating him while denying him the comfort of her arms. Bucky'd choked, his mouth damp against her neck, just where she always smelled of lavender water, and Mam had rocked him, saying like it was a blessing, "Shush, lamb, you've a hard road ahead of you yet."

It was silly to be jealous — he was Mam's only boy, the one who was her flesh and blood — but there'd been ugly pricklings of it along his skin. Even as his nose throbbed, he'd reproached himself; Mrs. Barnes's lap was always, when she was even seated and not keeping house like mess was the enemy in her personal war, occupied by at least one of Bucky's sisters or some dressmaking project, and Bucky probably hadn't been petted in who knew how long. It was alright for Mam to make much of Bucky, he'd decided. 

Only Bucky hadn't seemed to know what to do with it, sprawled out and shaking in Mam's arms. Mam had pushed Bucky's tumbled hair — he had so much hair, the lush sweep of brown, luxuriantly curling like he put it in rag-papers every night — back from his brow and looked into his reddened eyes. She'd cupped his chin, fingers spread to catch the edges of his jaw, just hardening into manhood, and kissed his cheeks and forehead. "You ease my mind considerably, Bucky Barnes," Mam'd said, and Steve'd been able to make neither heads nor tails of that, but Bucky had choked out a laugh, gathered himself together, and stepped back, throwing them a smart salute from the door.

"That's between Bucky and me," Mam said, pulling fabric taut and applying the heavy iron again. Steve huffed a little at the unsatisfying response and Mam smiled at him. "Sweet boy," she said, "it's glad I am you've got him at your side," and the fight went out of him. His nose really did ache, and his eyes felt unpleasantly heavy in his sore head, jostled by every labored breath he drew in through his mouth. He wondered if he'd ever be able to smell the spicy scent of a freshly sharpened pencil again, if half the pleasure of having Bucky's sure hands whittling away at a pencil with his pocketknife was gone forever.

Steve waited until his eyes didn't look so bruised — in the meantime finishing the sketches of Mam and doing one of Bucky's hands, swollen as they'd fluttered helplessly around his nose gushing blood like a hydrant — before he stopped at Bucky's house on an evening when Mam was working late at the hospital. All three of the Barnes girls looked pleased to see him, but the little ones didn't stop reaching up for their brother's attention with imploring fingers. Essie's chubby feet were unsteady on Bucky's left thigh and Lilly was wrapped around his opposite knee and the chair leg. Becca sat on the floor in front of him, listening raptly to the story he was spinning while she braided a rag-rug.

"Tell me something," Bucky said, interrupting himself, and Steve remembered that he'd stolen the phrase from him — how long had he been turning himself into the best copy of Bucky he could be? — "are you waiting for an engraved invitation to come in?" Becca frowned at him for halting the flow of Bucky's story, and Steve hastened to sit close enough that Lil could fall backwards into his lap with her usual bravado. Essie determinedly stepped closer to her brother's solid chest, crowing wordlessly when she could loll her head against his collarbone like a marble in a pinball chute.

Arms full of a still-squirming Lilly, Steve looked up at Bucky. "Sorry." 

Bucky didn't respond, other than to wrap his hand more securely around his baby sister's waist. His admonishing look at Lilly had a wink in it. "Behave, Banana," he said, and Lilly nodded solemnly.

"Your nose is all kinked," Bucky said then, raising his eyes to Steve's rearranged countenance. It was true, and it'd hardly made him better looking. Big bony nose in the middle of a small face — there wasn't any appeal in that. Bucky was only a few months older than he was, but he was already growing, limbs lengthening without losing any of their elasticity or strength. In no time at all he'd be shaving the jaw that was growing more defined by the hour; Steve could trace its sharpening by the near-daily sketches he made.

"The prince can have a kinked nose," Becca said firmly, gesturing for Bucky to continue with his fantastic tale, and Lilly reached up to pat Steve's cheek with a hand more kind than gentle.

*

He wouldn't trade his Mam for anyone or anything — not for having lungs clean as a whistle, even — but there was something lovely about the way Bucky's mam was the center of the universe for her whole family.

For him, too, because she treated him like one of her own, like she was glad to have the care of him in the hours he spent at her home. Her hands were soft despite years of needlework and cookery and cleaning and they pushed the hair back from his brow with fond pats. Somehow her caresses never made his pencil go astray, and he even kept going with the silhouette he was making of Lilly, who had a perfectly pure profile befitting a cameo. 

Later, he was glad Lilly's had been the first, because if he'd tried Essie's at the outset and had to deal with her squirming and staring at the candle instead of obediently presenting her profile, he might have given up on the whole idea. Bucky had whistled, keeping his baby sister entertained with a birdsong melody, and Steve had at last been able to complete the necessary outline.

"Pickle," Mrs. Barnes called, and both Bucky and Becca halted on their way out the door. They shared the nickname between them because first Bucky as a baby and then Becca less than two years behind him both curled up to sleep like dill pickles on a plate. Steve hadn't known them then, of course, but Mr. Barnes, who called himself a raconteur, was fond of telling the story for the amusement of his younger daughters, and Steve had heard it a number of times. Bucky had suggested that Steve exorcise the whole family of the story by drawing it and then burning the sketch, but Steve retorted that pickles, however sharply vinegary and unappetizing, didn't deserve to be so callously destroyed.

"Yes, Mama?" Becca responded.

"I need a few things from the market, since you're passing by."

Becca unceremoniously shoved a neat bundle of cloth into Bucky's hands, nearly causing him to drop the sharp shears he'd stealthily liberated from his mam's sewing basket. "Don't let her see," she hissed.

"I know, Becca. I ain't gonna spoil Mama's surprise. Go get her list." Bucky juggled everything he was holding, not letting Steve help. "You've already got the outlines, Steve," he said, like it was just good sense that Steve couldn't hold more than a few sheets of paper and his pencil, like the addition of one old shirt and three worn dresses would weigh him down unbearably. Steve, looking up and seeing only the stubbly underside of Bucky's chin, made a terrible face.

"What's the matter, Steve?" Becca asked, catching him at it as she returned.

"Nothing," he said sullenly. But Bucky nudged him out the door, all friendly and conspiratorial, his delight at surprising his mam written all over his face, and Steve lit up a little too, feeling the mean little knot inside him give.

It was a quick enough walk back home, and Steve was surprised to find Mam in the kitchen, parked in one chair and her feet up on the other. The radio was on and she had her hands clasped behind her head. Only she could look so tired and so content at the same time, and she smiled at Bucky and Becca even as she ran a hand down Steve's arm, ending as always with a tap on the protruding bone of his wrist.

"What's all this?" she asked.

"Steve's helping us with a present for Mama, Mrs. Rogers," Becca said.

"What terrible thing are you looking to foist on your defenseless mam?" Mam teased, and Bucky and Becca sprouted near-identical grins. They looked pretty similar most times, but it was when they smiled that they were the spit of each other. "I see old rags and some paper."

"Ah, it's a surprise, Mrs. R," Bucky said, extending a hand like gallant gestures were part of his everyday language. Steve was startled to see Mam place her hand in his and stand, the top of her head coming only just past Bucky's chin. Mam's eyes stayed open as Bucky took her for a spin around the tiny kitchen, and she was humming along with the radio; Steve wished he could stare hard enough to record the moment, but if he didn't keep the fabric of Essie's outgrown yellow dress taut while Becca cut her baby sister's silhouette out of it, all of the work he'd done that afternoon would amount to nothing.

Becca shook out her hand one song later. "I don't know how Mama manages with these things, they're so heavy," she said, laying the scissors down on the table. That was most likely his cue to pick them up himself, but Steve kept seeing flashes of Bucky and Mam out of the corner of his eye, and it was disorienting, like seeing a movie backwards, like the time when he and Bucky had snuck along with a couple of other fellows in their class to a cinema so cheap it projected films onto bedsheets thin enough to see through.

Mam and Bucky whirled to a stop, finally, and Mam was still glowing as she reached for the flowered cloth on the top of the pile. "Oh, Becca, I remember you in this dress. You used to wear it every time your mam took you to the market." She hugged Becca around the shoulders and stroked admiring fingers down the finished silhouette next to the pile, Essie's chubby cheeks and unruly curls captured in buttercup yellow. "You little loves are going to make your mam very happy."

Bucky ducked his head and smiled at his sister, looking like nothing could have made him prouder, and Steve, galvanized by the look, reached for the scissors and Becca's old dress.

*

Ever since the high summer day that Mr. Caracciolo had caught him gaping at the stained glass in church — glass that had light flowing through it, luminous as Bucky's eyes — he'd been giving Steve assignments, because he declared that _no one knew art like Italians knew art_. Steve, apparently, despite being the child of Rogers and Grant and one hundred percent Irish by blood and American by choice, could be counted as Italian in spirit, or at least was little enough for Mr. C to sneak him over the line. 

Mr. C's latest assignment was to draw a complete picture in one unbroken line. Not lifting his pencil from the paper was causing the point to go dull far too quickly, and he mumbled his frustration.

"Heya, Steve," he heard, and looked up from his work, unable at first to place that voice. Plenty of fellas had tried to prove their virility by picking on him, but the flow of them had dried up once it was clear Bucky wasn't ditching him; still, he shouldn't have gotten so lost in his art when he was sitting on the front stoop.

"Heya, Zev," he said, guardedly. He had no particular reason to be wary of Zev Proctor, who wasn't much taller than him, even if he had arms that were starting to bulge like Bucky's, but — tell the truth, Rogers — he wasn't crazy about him either, not since Bucky'd started palling around with him, an arm hooked around his neck.

Zev held out a paper bag, nearly flat but clearly not empty. "Bucky asked me to keep you in charcoal."

Steve flushed. He knew Bucky had a barter system set up all over Brooklyn, favors traded for favors, but he hadn't counted on getting something for nothing just by virtue of being known as Bucky's prize pal. Zev had to like Bucky a whole lot to go out of his way to scoop up the charcoal from his father's ovens and then deliver the bits to Steve's door. Bucky had done it when he was still working at Proctor's Bakery, but that was just Bucky all over, and Steve didn't like the idea of owing Zev Proctor anything.

"Yeah, thanks," he said, standing up and brushing the dust of the stoop from his pants. "You want to sit for a spell?"

"Nah," Zev said, gesturing at his other parcel, a bag with an aromatic loaf inside. Steve would bet it had seeds and herbs on top and was warm enough to melt butter. "I'm headed to Bucky's for dinner." Just the word was enough to make Steve hungry for Bucky's mam's cooking. "See you round, Steve."

Steve waved him off and took the likeliest-looking lump of charcoal in his fingers. Soon, Bucky's face, in one unbroken line, smiled up at him from the page. Steve looked down and considered it dispassionately, the clean bareness of it making Bucky look empty-eyed; there needed to be shadow, but by the rules of the exercise he couldn't introduce any to make Bucky look realer.

Maybe what he needed was a busier, more bustling scene to draw, a sense of action that would make a virtue of the unbroken line rather than showing up all that was missing. He considered and discarded several subjects before deciding on the string quartet made up of the old men who lived in the building, who had known his grandfather as a hale man — before the cancer killed him — and his father too, before he'd succumbed to the ruin mustard gas had made of his body. 

Steve had never told Mam, but he couldn't be sure which man was in his memories; all he could remember was a pair of worn-thin hands reaching for him, and fear of hurting Mam had kept him from ever drawing them. 

The old men had said plenty when both men were declining, and more still when Joe Rogers's widow and child kept the ground-floor apartment, but not all of it had been bad; Mam said that all they had left after their families were battered and decimated by the Great War were words and music. 

Mr C had said no one understood stone and paint like the Italians and no one knew music like the Germans, but Steve felt something working through his American blood as he translated what he'd seen so many times into something on the page. Clustered together were the men in their makeshift quartet, each with his instrument. The scrollwork at the tip of Mr C's battered violin led to the top of the cello, the cellist curving his spine so his ear was near his fingers moving unerringly on the strings; Mr C always smiled down the length of his violin to see that, how it looked like Mr. Misha was listening to his cello confiding something. Steve liked it too, the evenings he'd been allowed to watch them, and never said until now — when all his secrets were put, clear as day, on the pages in front of him — that he enhanced the cellist's pose by way of a thousand memories of Bucky, eyebrows inquisitively up and leaning down to listen to Lilly whisper some secret in his ear at his prompting of, "What is it, Banana?"

It was always Bucky. Page after page of his sketchbooks showed him Bucky in every mood and every time of day. Steve's fingers tightened and the stick of charcoal snapped as his breath hitched in his lungs with the epiphany. 

*

Steve felt himself growing tongue-tied. Of course it would happen when he was trying to speak man-to-man with Mr. Barnes, who had the biggest vocabulary of anyone he'd ever met, including his teachers. Mr. Barnes _treasured_ words and rolled them around on his tongue like they were delicious, and here he was, unable to spit out even one coherent syllable. Of course it would happen in front of Bucky.

Mr. Barnes was frowning his incomprehension but clapped Steve on the shoulder anyway. "Of course, son. We keep kits like that in the factory; we get them from the manufacturers hoping to demonstrate their largesse. Have as many as you like."

Steve didn't let himself look at Bucky, who was very evidently gathering steam but still silent, standing halfway between the two of them. "No, sir, I was hoping to set myself up at a shoeshine stand, but I need money for the brushes and polish and cream. I could pay you back first thing." There. He'd said it and even avoided saying "shoeshine boy," a term he was years too old for, even if strangers wouldn't know it from his physique.

"There's no need for such formality, Steve," Mr. Barnes said, and Steve flushed, remembering Mam's declaration that Mr. Barnes was a good man even if he didn't belong to any church, even a Protestant one. "Just take the kits you need — Bucky will sort them out for you — and set yourself up somewhere safe. And you'll need a proper pair of shoes yourself if you're to gain your customers' approbation."

Mr. Barnes was barely out the door when Bucky spoke. "Don't make that face."

"I ain't takin' charity," he ground out, knowing his grammar slipped whenever he was upset but unable to help it. He could see his way clear to taking _one_ kit and buying whatever else he needed from the first profits, but he wasn't gonna walk all over the Barneses and take free shoes from their factory. So what if his shoes were too big and the soles were coming loose? Stuffing them with newspaper made them snug and insulated, and there was plenty of paper to be found even without going through anyone's trash.

"I ain't gonna keep readin' the headlines on your socks," Bucky said, just as low and dangerous. Steve felt obscurely flattered, that Bucky was taking him seriously enough to argue with him. Buck had a history of playing not to win but to keep everyone sweet-tempered, turning down his fair share of victories and treats to keep the peace; the last thing Steve wanted was to be treated like one of Buck's little sisters, for whom Bucky cheated justice in the name of kindness. "We _make_ shoes. How's it look for people to see my best pal in clodhoppers?"

"Ain't nobody's business what I wear," Steve said, just to keep the fight going. He looked at people all the time, the better to draw them, and he could always feel someone else's attention on him, whether it was generous or critical. Why couldn't Bucky _see_ that he couldn't just take a shiny new pair of shoes, that a gift like that would be a reproach to Mam, who'd scraped and pinched just to get him the pair he was wearing now? "You don't gotta be seen around with me, a dandy like you."

It was too far. He always went too far these days, scared that the truth would tumble out of his mouth, proving Mam's pet name for him to be a bit of prophecy. He'd be Bucky's sweet boy any day of the week.

He stared down at his shoes, too dull to give him back his reflection, and chanced a glance upward at Bucky. Buck had his head averted like he'd been slapped, and all Steve could see was the clean, sharp line of his jaw, set sweet above a slender, muscled throat. 

"Sorry," Steve mumbled. "I don't mean to be . . . like this. Fighting, lashing out."

"Contentious," Bucky offered, still turned away. It was a word Mr. Barnes had defined the other day, and Steve nodded.

"Contentious is the nicest word for it," Bucky said after a moment. "Just because you feel like a match doesn't mean you have to go around looking for gasoline."

But there was nothing to douse him, Steve thought, if Mam and Bucky between them couldn't manage it. Even his best days felt like he was one step away from a conflagration, and Bucky was forever next to him and out of reach.

*

"Angels with dirty faces I've got," Mam bewailed as she scrubbed the dirt off Steve's cheeks with a dark look that promised Bucky he'd be the next to experience her less-than-tender ministrations. "You weren't even playing the game, sweet boy, so how'd you get covered in dirt and reeking of beer?" 

Steve hissed through his teeth, letting her think that her damp cloth had pulled unnecessarily hard at his skin rather than admitting that her words touched a nerve. Of course he hadn't been playing; he could barely swing a bat, couldn't be trusted to field a ball, and would most likely keel over if he tried to sprint to first base. Bucky always offered comfort by saying it didn't matter what you couldn't do as long as you had a friend who could do it for you, but Steve had never seen it that way and he liked it even less now, when he was so intensely awake to all of Buck's wonders. Anyway, the opposite had always seemed truer to him: if he couldn't do simple things like playing ball, how on earth was he supposed to keep friends — a friend, a beloved boy, his Bucky — who could?

To top it off, Bucky liked sports but not enough to spend his time on them. He played in the factory's summer baseball games to join in the family spirit of the thing, and there was enough of a grudge match between Barnes Boots and Nassau Brewing Company that he'd never have missed those games. Steve had sat in the stands with Essie on his lap, tightly flanked by Lilly and Becca, and watched Bucky at bat. Bucky was lithe, Bucky had follow-through to his swing; when he swung a baseball bat, his back would curve until behind it his wrist nearly met his opposite ankle. To Steve, he'd looked like heroic sculptures straight out of Greece, muscle and sinew made anew in marble.

Essie hadn't jumped and clapped like her sisters did, and Steve'd supposed she must still be too little to understand the game, so he'd given her a little extra cuddle whenever Bucky was on base. He'd told himself it was Essie's defiant hair — it grew up instead of down, in a messy halo of auburn curls — going up his nose that made his eyes water when Mr. Barnes stood by home plate to clap Bucky on the shoulder after Buck's last home run.

The Nassau folks had been good enough sports to make sure all of the players were well provided with beers after the game, and Steve had stolen a sip from Bucky's bottle when Buck was juggling his sister. Essie's always shiny eyes had brightened further when she'd seen her brother and she'd leapt the two feet into his arms without any warning, raising a cloud of dust that would have set Steve coughing had he not had Bucky's beer to wet his throat. She'd kissed the cleft in her brother's chin — that spot was hers and hers alone — and let him seat her on his shoulders, little fists clutched in his hair.

Steve had looked around when Bucky reclaimed his bottle, suddenly aware that Lilly was off with Mr. Barnes, charming the factory players with her imitations of the crack of the bat and her brother's stance, and that he'd lost Becca somewhere. No, there she was, eyes locked with Zev Proctor, who'd kept faith with Bucky and brought Steve charcoal every once in a while. He knew now that Zev's people were related to Bucky's mam's family somehow; the Proctors and the Benjamins were something like third cousins, going by however Jewish people tallied kinship. Steve didn't have any cousins but he couldn't imagine looking at one like the way Becca was looking at Zev. When he'd turned, he had seen Bucky looking not at his sister but at Zev; whatever he'd seen must have satisfied him, because he'd swung Essie down from her perch with a little tickle to her round belly.

"Come on, Buttercup, time for you to get home. Save me a doughnut," Bucky'd said, handing his giggling sister off to Mr. Barnes and then swinging an arm around Steve's uneven shoulders. It had been more contact than Becca got from her suitor, and Steve had chided himself for his idiocy even as he preened a little, standing a bit straighter despite the weight of Buck's limb across his back.

*

"God gave you models worth having," Mr. C said, flipping through Steve's latest sketchbook and waving a hand toward the others, neatly pressed together in long rows. "All of these girls are going to be beauties." Steve nodded — that was incontestable. Mr. C turned to a page that had a three-quarter sketch of Becca, a profile of Lilly, and a full-front of Essie. The end of Becca's braid was a defiant swooping curl that looked like a flourish from a particularly dashing signature; Steve had been particularly pleased with the way that'd turned out, the way it showed off her literary ambitions. For her last birthday, Becca'd gotten a blue skirt suit, a wool coat, and little cap, all made by Mrs. Barnes to match Nellie Bly's famous globetrotting outfit. She hadn't worn anything else for the entire weekend; Steve had drawn half a sketchbook's pages worth of her.

In all the ways Becca's portrait was truthful, Lil's was not. The end of Lilly's braid was a neat little arrow; the sleek lines of it, like her perfectly demure face, said nothing about the wild heart that beat in her chest. Lil was the only one of them who looked like she was already his family, the only one whose picture, blurred, could be of Mam. And Essie was a baby Buck, the same dime-bright eyes and smiling mouth, only with curls that grew defiantly up rather than sleekly pressed to a skull.

Mr. C turned the page and tapped an insistent finger on the blankness of the next. "Draw a space you know very well. Then again like you're a crumb on the floor. Then again like you're a spider weaving her web in one corner of the ceiling. _Perspective,_ " he said, and Steve knew he was supposed to understand more than he really did, just from that one word. He supposed it would be smart to take a break from drawing Buck; he probably did it in his sleep, sketching masterful portraits that would turn his sheets and pillows black if he had charcoal in his hand.


End file.
